Nelly Cootalot clash with the White Chamber (Wintermute)? [SOLVED]

Started by Ali, Mon 21/03/2011 18:52:48

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Ali

Apart from the stylistic incongruities between the two games, a tester has told me that an updated version of Nelly Cootalot using DX9 doesn't seem to work if The White Chamber is installed. Apparently winsetup.exe will not run if TWC is installed. When it's uninstalled, winsetup.exe works, but if TWC is reinstalled winsetup.exe stops working again.

(Please note that this is a beta version of Nelly Cootalot v1.6, not the currently available v1.5 which does not conflict with TWC).

The report I got is this:

Quote
I just removed "The White Chamber" from my computer (it runs under Wintermute engine) and Nelly 1.6 winsetup.exe works fine... so strange.

I just install again "The White Chamber" and the error come to life again! I attach to you the win7 error message. It's in spanish, but the sentence is:

"Some game's essential files can't be loaded. Reinstall the game and try again please."

The more strange thing is that the error's icon is from "The white chamber". So, I execute Nelly's winsetup.exe and the error come up with an icon from "The white chamber"... crazy world!

So the error appears to come from the white chamber, even though Nelly's setup is being loaded...?!

I'm going to download TWC as soon as I can to try and replicate the error, but perhaps you guys know of a possible explanation?

Thanks,

Al.

Pumaman

Strange, does it matter which game you install first?

Ali

It would appear not, because the tester started with TWC installed, uninstalled it and then reinstalled it. I'll report back once I'm able to download TWC.

Ali

I am able to recreate the error:

---------------------------
Error
---------------------------
Some of the essential game files cannot be loaded. Please reinstall the game and try again.
---------------------------
OK   
---------------------------

Double-clicking winsetup.exe inexplicably seems to run game.exe the wintermute engine runtime from the White Chamber folder. I'm running Nelly Cootalot out of a folder in My Documents on Win 7. The White Chamber is in Program Files where the installer put it.

Is this the first recorded case of adventure game engine sabotage?!

TomatoesInTheHead

I suspect this to be an issue with the Windows search order.

Normally, any exe or dll executed from a program should be searched in different places in the following order:
   1. The directory from which the application loaded.
   2. The current directory.
   3. The system directory.
   4. The 16-bit system directory.
   5. The Windows directory.
   6. The directories that are listed in the PATH environment variable.
or the current directory even after the windows directory (at 5th position)
(source: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms682586%28VS.85%29.aspx)

However, this order seemed to have been changed in some newer versions of windows, so that system directories and paths in the PATH variable are searched even before any local directory is searched (source: http://weblogs.asp.net/pwilson/archive/2003/06/24/9214.aspx)
Now I don't know if "local" means only the current directory or also the directory the application is loaded from (which may be different), and I don't know what applies for Win7, as these sources talk about XP and Win Server 2000 and 2003.

But if TWC writes its path into the PATH variable, and winsetup.exe searches paths in the PATH variable before it searches its own directory for a file named game.exe because Windows says so, it would find TWC's game.exe first, and start it (and TWC doesn't like executed this way for some reason and throws this error message).

So, maybe look whether the TWC directory is in the PATH variable, and try adding the path to Nelly (which, btw, is the cutest game I've played, ever) in front of the PATH variable, so that it's searched first.

Gilbert

BTW does this happen if winsetup.exe is launched through a short-cut not in the game's own folder, or that the executable is launched in the game's folder? If it's the latter case, definitely something is wrong. Seems that the Vista/7 generation of Windows has some weird behaviour (not to mention limited access to some folders or whatever which is quite annoying).

I suppose that if the AGS game's folder is not named 'game', so the executable will not be named 'game.exe' and has a more unique name this won't happen, but this is still, annoying.

monkey0506

Does the generated winsetup.exe use a path like "game.exe" or "./game.exe"? Coz I would think that since the latter is a relative path that it would avoid these issues.

Ali

Quote from: Iceboty V7000a on Tue 22/03/2011 08:26:47
I suppose that if the AGS game's folder is not named 'game', so the executable will not be named 'game.exe' and has a more unique name this won't happen, but this is still, annoying.

Yes, it is! I had no idea that was what dictated the name of the executable - it's a bit obscure. Renaming the folder 'Nelly' sorted the problem.

Thanks for the help, at least I've learned about another annoying Windows 7 'improvement'.

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